


a catholic and a liar walk into a bar

by darthtayter



Category: Community (TV), The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-19
Updated: 2016-01-19
Packaged: 2018-05-14 22:48:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5761840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darthtayter/pseuds/darthtayter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“So, did you like the part where I implicated his mother for eating sushi while pregnant?” Smarmy Lawyer is smirking at her, swirling a glass in one hand and clicking a pen with the other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a catholic and a liar walk into a bar

**Author's Note:**

  * For [firstofoctober](https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstofoctober/gifts).



> tumblr prompt: scully/winger "things you said at 1 AM". let's pretend this is some vague time in the 90s post-auditioning for the real world and pre-scully and mulder are boning.

The first time Dana Scully sleeps with Jeff Winger, it’s because he’s made her angry. She and Mulder have gone through yet another prolonged trial where Mulder has yet again somehow shot every piece of evidence she painstakingly gathered in their metaphorical feet, and it’s so goddamned frustrating to watch this piss-ant baby attorney run circles around him and not say a word, not start yelling at Mulder, at the rat bastard possible mer-man on the stand, at everyone's respective lawyers. At this one lawyer in particular.

“So, in conclusion, if we have to live in a world where a man, through no fault of his own, grows fins, may we not also live in a world where that man can stand up, and find the freedom on this old, hard-to-navigate, baby blue marble I like to call Earth-” the crowd audibly gasps here “-to maybe ALLEGEDLY borrow a tank? Who among us can deny him? How can we dishonor our _troops_ in such a way?”

That somehow works, and Mulder is just starting what is sure to be an eight-hour sulking session in his hotel room when she excuses herself to drown her sorrows at the bar. She's just sipped her gin when a voice sends nails-on-chalkboard shivers down her spine.

“So, did you like the part where I implicated his mother for eating sushi while pregnant?” Smarmy Lawyer is smirking at her, swirling a glass in one hand and clicking a pen with the other.

“I’m surprised you can look yourself in the mirror,” Scully says in clipped tones, taking a long drink and looking pointedly in the opposite direction.

“I’d be surprised if your partner had ever seen one. Nice tie.” Smarmy Lawyer’s tie (she notices when she glances back over) sets off his eyes so well that it’s almost too obvious, pathetic. 

“Why would you even take the case?” Scully asks once she's finished her first glass, honestly curious. He just doesn’t seem like the public defender type (not that Mulder has been able to make himself heard even with the rent-a-lawyers most of their admittedly extremely particular brand of scumbag ends up with).

“Honestly? Lost a bet,” says S.L., ripping a napkin into perfectly equal squares, and stacking them on the bar. “This is going to look so good on my record though. ‘Up-and-Coming Ace Attorney Defends Disabled American Hero Whose Only Crime Was Wanting To Be Part Of Our Great Military Tradition.” He traces the air as he says it, his hand cocked as if writing with a quill.

“I’d polish that slightly,” Scully advises. “He killed two people with that tank.”

“He sure did,” said Smarmy Lawyer. “Alright, Agent Starling's shorter sister. Let me buy you another one, and you can explain to me why I should feel so very bad about that.”

God, she needs another one.

-

“I am a _medical. Doctor,”_ Scully says to him much later, and she doesn’t slur, she never slurs, but she knows when she’s had a few because she starts over-emphasizing. She's sitting next to him now. She's not sure when that happened.

“I wanted to be a doctor once,” says Jeff Winger (he said his own name enough to every woman that’s sat at this bar in the last two hours that she's learned it by osmosis). “Then I realized that human nature is sort of the metaphysical equivalent of a dog eating its own feces and traded up.”

She can’t think of anything to say to that, so she kisses him on the mouth, and thank god, he talks a little less after that. 

-

It’s pretty awkward in the morning, and Mulder spends the whole flight in a crotchety silence, but she’s _so_ past caring.

 


End file.
